Employment Discrimination Blog

A recent article published by the Atlanta Journal Constitution reveals the alarming rate at which workplace discrimination and sexual harassment claims are dismissed by Georgia courts. According to research of cases filed in 2011 and 2012, close to 80 percent of cases in the Atlanta area were dismissed prior to trial, a steep increase from the already too-high nationwide dismissal rate of 70 percent. Most of these cases fail under Georgia’s summary judgment rules, which require a court to dismiss a case if the case lacks a genuine dispute of a material fact. This common problem plagues employment discrimination cases as they are notoriously difficult to prove.

Possible Reasons for Dismissal Rates in GA

There are a number of possible explanations for the high dismissal rates, namely the aforementioned issue of lack of evidence. In order to prevail in a Georgia employment discrimination case, your attorney must prove that you were terminated, demoted or otherwise treated negatively in the workplace based on one of the protected classes – which include race, national origin, sex, age, disability, pregnancy, color, religion or history of bankruptcy. As Georgia is an employment at-will state, an employer can rebut a discrimination claim by asserting the negative employment decision was made for any other non-discriminatory reason, or no reason at all. By working with an experienced discrimination attorney, you stand a better chance of gathering the evidence you need to advance your claim of discrimination, even if the claim itself proves to be an uphill battle.

While many proponents of anti-discrimination in the workplace criticize the Atlanta court system for its seemingly apathetic approach to discrimination lawsuits, attorneys familiar with employer defense herald the statistics as an appropriate measure of the sheer volume of frivolous lawsuits passing through the federal and state systems. However, it is difficult to conceive how a case can be truly deemed meritless prior to its being heard before a judge a jury.